On December 5, 2019, the Harvard Center for African Studies hosted a lecture on African Twilight: Vanishing Ceremonies of the African Continent, which featured highlights from African Twilight, a fifteen-year study and visual homage to the vanishing traditions of the continent. Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith shared striking photos and videos, insightful stories, and unique experiences seeking out remote communities to record sacred ceremonies, celebrating Africa’s powerful art forms and boundless creativity. Forty percent of the traditions and ceremonies that Beckwith and Fisher have recorded over the last four decades no longer exists.
A few of the photos Carol and Angela shared during their presentation.
Top Left: Salei Maasai Warriors, Tanzania
Top Right: Pende Kitenga Mask, DR Congo
Bottom Left: Salei Maasai Warriors, Tanzania
Bottom Right: Salampasu Warrior, DR Congo
The lecture began with an hour-long breathtaking photographic presentation of 93 dazzling ceremonies, rituals and rites of passage from birth to death across 26 countries through short videos and photographic slides to a packed audience at the Center for African Studies lounge. Some of the outstanding photos included courtship rituals of the Ariaal of Kenya, the Wodaabe, Maasai warrior initiations in Tanzania, masquerades of the spirit world in Burkina Faso, royal rituals of the Kuba Kingdom in DR Congo for which most of them are observed exclusively within the confines of the communities and in secrecy. Rare forms of costumery such as masks, jewelry, paintings and the dances and movements that accompany these rituals are captivating and as the presenters opined, will be a disservice to African forms of art if they are not protected. These collections have been documented and published into their current book that was showcased at the presentation. They alluded that urbanization and modern technology have increasingly relegated these traditions to a state of extinction.
In conclusion, they Carol and Angela cautioned that as Africa enters the twenty-first century, traditional values brings a sense of community and fulfillment in peoples way of life and cannot be ignored. This will include respect for the elderly and the knowledge they passed from one generation to another, lessons learned from each stage of life, and the maintaining of rituals that keep us in balance with nature and the environment for a peaceful world.
You can watch the full lecture here.
